Trivializing Fukushima

[Octafish]

Before all the tarps are up, ask: Why would the Washington Post want readers to believe "Fukushima is overrated?"

Why the Washington Post's Description of the Nuclear Disaster as “non-catastrophic” is both Callous and Erroneous

Trivializing Fukushima

by LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
CounterPunch May 01, 2012

On April 23, 2012, the editorial board of the Washington Post proclaimed that the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan was “non-catastrophic.” The writers eagerly promoted nuclear power while omitting inconvenient deal-breakers such as cost, waste, safety, health risks and human rights. The board taunted Germany and Japan – and the anti-nuclear movement – for looking to renewables but misrepresented Germany’s successes. They showed a shocking disregard for the suffering in Japan due to a very real catastrophe that is by no means over. And they utterly ignored those who have already paid the price for the nuclear fuel chain, like indigenous uranium miners, and its newest victims, the children of Japan whose future has been stolen.

SNIP...

WP: The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was “scary but ultimately non-catastrophic.”

FACT: The Post is writing in the past tense about an accident that is not over. The extent of radioactive contamination is still unknown and growing. Unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi remains precarious and could cause further, and greater, harm, with its high-level radioactive waste pool on the brink of potential collapse.

To the existing human suffering in Japan will be added, over time, countless people who will sicken and die prematurely as a result of their exposure to the Fukushima radiation. In addition to cancer, likely negative health effects can include birth defects, spontaneous abortions, brain tumors, diabetes, heart disease, and genetic and teratogenic mutations. Emotional suffering should not be dismissed. The Post writers would do well to imagine their own children forbidden to play outside; evacuated hundreds of miles away; or shamed into consuming radioactively contaminated food and milk. In Japan, stress, grief and guilt have split families and entire communities apart. Farmers and fishermen have lost their livelihoods due to radiological contamination of land and sea. Thousands are being forced to accept permanent exile from their homes, jobs, friends, land and everything they once knew. With a 20km (12.4 mile) area around the stricken reactors a “dead zone” for a minimum of decades and potentially centuries, it is hard to know what more the Post editorial writers need to qualify as “catastrophic.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/01/trivializing-fukushima/

And a PDF from BeyondNuclear.org:

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/documents/Why%20the%20WP%20is%20Wrong.pdf

Move on. Move on. Further! Miles further! Uh. Forget about it!

[madokie]

1. the press is in the pocket of big corporations, nuclear included

and this is not something that the nuclear industry wants much coverage of so we get bullshit and very little coverage, what we do get smells most times.

Be nice to see this posted in the E/E group.

[Octafish]

5. ''You think I contaminated myself, you think I did that?'' -- Karen Silkwood (portrayed in film)

Here's something my GOOGLE wouldn't allow me to find (I had to empty cache, etc) from DU2:

The Police State has powers undreamed. All we really have is Truth.

Remembering the Killing of Karen Silkwood

August 11, 2009 in Capitalism, Environmental Justice, Nuclear, Organizing

After watching the brilliantly-acted and courageous film Silkwood (1983, starring Meryl Streep), I learned the compelling story of Karen Silkwood and her death, which has seemingly been forgotten by America. Karen, only 28, was a union activist working in a Kerr-McGee nuclear power plant in Oklahoma, who died in a suspicious car accident while on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter for a story that would have exposed the company’s dangerous and illegal mishandling of plutonium.

Karen was active in her union, calling attention to the radioactive contamination in the plant, and spent months compiling evidence to show that the company was deliberately covering up the fact that their fuel rods contained imperfections, which could put millions of lives at risk if they sparked a meltdown. The night of her death, many believe Karen was deliberately driven off the road by another car, and her family was later able to sue Kerr-McGee for $1.3 million in damages, but the company admits no wrongdoing.

The nuclear plant where Karen worked was shut down in 1975, one year after her death. When Karen’s story became public controversy, it helped display the dangers inherent to nuclear power, contributing to the amazingly successful anti-nuclear movement that has stopped construction of all new nuclear plants in the US since 1979. Thus is especially important today as some corporate lobbyists are trying to repackage nuclear power as a “clean” or “carbon-free” energy “source.” In fact, it’s none of those things.

Karen’s story is both a warning and an inspiration – that capitalism pushes companies to sometimes do terrible things to protect their profits, even if it means endangering lives, but also that brave people such as Karen Silkwood, in bringing the truth to light, can challenge us to create a better world.

CONTINUED w LINKS:

http://endofcapitalism.com/2009/08/11/remembering-the-killing-of-karen-silkwood

Kerr-McGee was the family firm of Robert McGee, longtime conservative Democratic senator from Oklahoma. They made a mint mining uranium.

The embedded link above for "They made a mint mining uranium" doesn't work for some strange reason. It goes to an online excerpt from p. 481 of "Encyclopedia of White-Collar and Corporate Crime, Vol. 1" by Lawrence M. Salinger.

http://books.google.com/books?id=0f7yTNb_V3QC&pg=PA481&lpg=PA481&dq=robert-kerr+kerr-mcgee+karen-silkwood&source=bl&ots=OeQuNOaDV_&sig=nEG7CR_e9PUQzMSxMlZRoYRFWTw&hl=en&ei=1zESTZGcFYSonAeSwLzADg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFcQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=robert-kerr%20kerr-mcgee%20karen-silkwood&f=false

PS: Feel free to post in E/E, madokie. If you have no time, I'll try later this noche.

PPS: To Agent Mike -- nice job on screwing up my computer through a simple GOOGLE search. Much obliged, NAZI!

[saras]

2. Look at the truth from fifties American experiments. Imagine telling that truth in the fifties.

America would have violently revolted against nuclear weapons if they had any idea how much damage was being done in this country by nuclear development and testing.

If we told the truth about the long-term effects of Fukushima, the news would just disappear into "the world is going to hell in a handbasket" bin.

But I'll simply state - if you're under 30, you will, personally, see the effects of Fukushima on a real, live human being (not a media image) before you die.

[Octafish]

6. True. And heartbreaking, in every way.

Last year, I was brought in to teach high schoolers about journalism and PR for a special project. The kids were the greatest (the project, also, in its own way). Telling them about Fukushima was a case study in the power of the mass media to control opinions. No matter how much I tried to get them to understand the dangers from Fukushima -- in order to protect themselves and their families from the rains in March 2011, etc -- they laughed. If it was a "real problem" to them, it'd be on the tee vee. I was so mad, I spit cyanide.

Did get a few of them (and the good principal) to read Octafish, though.

Know Your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

Thank you, saras, for understanding. I fear for my children and grandkids -- and you and your loved ones (under 30 and all ages above and below).

[closeupready]

3. Highly irresponsible from our nation's designated Truth-Tellers, but

then again, when people like Judith Miller can peddle bullshit on the front pages of our MSM, we know we can't trust them as we used to to tell us honestly about our reality.

[Octafish]

7. ''We never meant to conceal the information, but it never occurred to us to make it public.''

I've heard people -- children and adults -- say, "It must be true, if it was on television." And that makes me barf.

Corporate McPravda Represents One of Our Biggest Problems

A blast from the recent past: An example of just how lowly the world's corporate elite consider the 99-percent...

NUCLEAR CRISIS: HOW IT HAPPENED

Government radiation data disclosure--too little, too late

The Yomiuri Shimbun
June 11, 2011

EXCERPT...

At 8:39 a.m. on March 12, about 18 hours after the earthquake, radioactive tellurium-132 was detected in Namiemachi, Fukushima Prefecture, six kilometers from Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s damaged plant, according to the report from the agency.

The detection of Te-132 meant the temperature of nuclear fuel at the plant had shot up to more than 1,000 C. It also meant nuclear fuel pellets in the reactor cores had been damaged and nuclear material had leaked into the environment.

Seven hours later, a massive hydrogen explosion rocked the plant's No. 1 reactor.

Attempting to explain the delay in making the information public, agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said later, "We never meant to conceal the information, but it never occurred to us to make it public."

CONTINUED...

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110610005496.htm

Thank you, closeupready, for understanding the major stuff we are in.

[RobertEarl]

4. Kick n/t

[Octafish]

8. There's not a supergangster alive today who doesn't owe it all to these two crooks:

Between the two (and Pruneface Ronnie, the Cardboard Messiah), they ran the executive for 20 years.
That's more than enough time to pretty much stock each agency with their cronies and unindicted co-conspirators.



Lots of money in war and oil and nooks.

[malaise]

9. Fugging hacks

These criminals should be banished to Fukushima

[Mnemosyne]

10. Needed kicked for more eyes...